WP: As opioid overdoses rise, police officers become counselors, doctors and social workers

[skinsmarydu]

^^^  Or that.  They deserve to get what they gave. 

As long as they suffer.  A lot. 

[China]

Mexico's Sinaloa cartel bans fentanyl, reportedly under pain of death

 

Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, the top exporter of fentanyl to the U.S., has banned the production and trafficking of the illegal opioid, killing several suppliers who refused to stop, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing cartel members.

 

The shift, handed down in June from the "Chapitos" — four of jailed Sinaloa kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán's sons — and underscored by three bodies found covered with blue pills, is reportedly in response to increasing heat from U.S. law enforcement. Fentanyl overdose deaths have risen sharply in the U.S., adding political pressure to regular drug interdiction efforts.

 

More than a dozen banners appeared in trafficking hubs this month announcing the ban, signed by the Chapitos and their allies, the Journal reported. A midlevel Sinaloa cartel operative told the Journal he's now "destroying" the 25 fentanyl labs he oversaw. "Some stopped producing. Others kept producing, and we are killing them," he said.

 

About a dozen people involved in the recalcitrant Sinaloa fentanyl underworld have gone missing in the past 10 days, a local human rights advocate told the Journal.

 

Mexican security consultant Edwardo Guerrero said the Chapitos are worried about getting arrested and extradited to the U.S., like El Chapo and his son Ovidio. Ovidio Guzmán was arrested for a second time in January and extradited to the U.S. in September.

 

The Sinaloa operative said the cartel leaders want U.S. law enforcement to focus anti-fentanyl crackdown efforts on the rival Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Mexican and U.S. officials were skeptical the ban was more than short-term PR.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

The opioid crisis has gotten much, much worse despite Congress’ efforts to stop it

 

America’s drug overdose crisis is out of control. Washington, despite a bipartisan desire to combat it, is finding its addiction-fighting programs are failing.

 

In 2018, Republicans, Democrats and then-President Donald Trump united around legislation that threw $20 billion into treatment, prevention and recovery. But five years later, the SUPPORT Act has lapsed and the number of Americans dying from overdoses has grown more than 60 percent, driven by illicit fentanyl. The battle has turned into a slog.

 

Even though 105,000 Americans died last year, Congress is showing little urgency about reupping the law since it expired on Sept. 30. That’s not because of partisan division, but a realization that there are no quick fixes a new law could bring to bear.

 

“We are in the middle of a crisis of proportions we couldn’t have imagined even five years ago when the original SUPPORT Act was passed,” said Libby Jones, program director of the Overdose Prevention Initiative at the Global Health Advocacy Incubator. “If they can’t pass this, it’s really sad.”

 

Congress is not coming to the rescue. The House is without a speaker after Republicans fired Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) earlier this month and the GOP has made no progress in replacing him. That’s brought legislation to a standstill.

 

Asked why the Senate committee with responsibility for the law hasn’t even begun to consider it, Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said other priorities had precedence. “We’re working on a myriad of problems,” he said after listing his efforts to shore up the primary care system and lower drug prices.

 

Sanders’ attitude reflects the course of the fight against fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that accounts for most of the deaths. Fentanyl’s addictiveness, its affordability, and broader trends driving people to use drugs are overwhelming efforts to convince them not to — and to treat them when they do.

 

Congress can continue to fund opioid-fighting efforts without passing a new version of the SUPPORT Act. But failing to pass another law forfeits the opportunity to try new approaches. That has advocates discouraged.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

Opioid sales boomed at Publix while other pharmacies settled suits

 

An executive at Teva Pharmaceuticals flagged Publix Super Markets in October 2015 after detecting what he called in an email “serious red flags” with the grocery chain’s orders of powerful opioids.

 

The share of high-strength oxycodone orders was well above normal for a chain of grocery store pharmacies, and the total number of pills sent to Publix stores was “significantly above their peers,” Teva’s head of federal compliance wrote in the email to his supervisors, according to court records in a federal lawsuit pending in Ohio against Publix and other companies.

“This is high-strength oxycodone ultimately going to Florida, a well-established hot spot for oxycodone abuse in the U.S.,” wrote the compliance officer, Joseph Tomkiewicz, in the email explaining why he halted Teva-manufactured prescription opioids to Florida’s Publix pharmacies.

 

The volume of prescription opioids dispensed in Florida fell 56% from 2011 to 2019 as the pharmaceutical industry was hit by lawsuits for its role in the national opioid crisis, according to a Tampa Bay Times analysis of Drug Enforcement Administration data recently released by a federal court. But while national pharmacy chains like CVS and Walgreens were dispensing fewer of the highly addictive drugs, Publix’s sales were soaring.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

New opioid 25 times more powerful than fentanyl circulating in Quebec: public health

 

A synthetic opioid 25 times more powerful than fentanyl has made its way to the Quebec City region, where public health officials reported Saturday they have detected the dangerous compound in pale green tablets that mimic the appearance of other prescription opioids.

 

The Quebec City regional public health authority warned the compound, protonitazepyne, presents a high risk of overdose, which may require several doses of the life-saving medication naloxone.

 

Health Canada first detected the substance in 2023 and would go on to positively identify it in a total of 25 drug samples by the end of the year. Public health officials working in the Quebec City-area now say it has been increasingly found in the Montreal area since the beginning of 2024.

 

No overdoses in the Quebec City region have been linked to the protonitazepyne tablets, but officials say it presents a very real threat.

 

"However, it's clear that given the potency and the fact that it's in a tablet of something else, the risk of overdose is very high for people who would consume this tablet," Dr. Anne-Frédérique Lambert-Slythe with the Quebec City public health authority said in an interview.

 

Officials further warn that protonitazepyne does not show up on test strips designed to detect fentanyl.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[China]

How Portugal eased its opioid epidemic, while U.S. drug deaths skyrocketed

 

Talk to people addicted to street drugs in Lisbon, Portugal's capital, and you hear confusion and dismay over the carnage of overdose deaths taking place an ocean away in the U.S.

 

Ana Batista, a soft-spoken woman in her 50s who's been addicted to heroin for years, said she hasn't lost a single friend or family member to a fatal overdose.

 

"No, no, no," she said, speaking at a safe drug consumption clinic, where she had come to inject under the supervision of nurses and counselors.

 

Liliana Santos, 41, a woman with a sad weathered face who had come to the clinic to smoke heroin, voiced similar bafflement.

 

Had she lost friends or family? "No." Had she overdosed herself? She shook her head: "No, no."

 

The contrast is striking. In the U.S., drug deaths are shatteringly common, killing roughly 112,000 people a year. In Portugal, weeks sometimes go by in the entire country without a single fatal overdose.

 

Portugal has roughly the same population as the state of New Jersey. But while New Jersey alone sees nearly 3,000 fatal drug overdoses a year, Portugal averages around 80.

 

"The statistics really speak for themselves," said Miguel Moniz, an anthropologist at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, who studies addiction policy in the U.S. and Portugal.

 

What's different in Portugal? In the late 1990s, the country faced an explosion of heroin use. The drug was causing roughly 350 overdose deaths a year and sparked a wave of HIV/AIDS and other diseases linked to dirty needles.

 

Portugal's leaders responded by pivoting away from the U.S. drug war model, which prioritized narcotics seizures, arrests and lengthy prison sentences for drug offenders.

 

Instead, Portugal focused scarce public dollars on health care, drug treatment, job training and housing. The system, integrated into the country's taxpayer-funded national health care system, is free and relatively easy to navigate.

 

Click on th elink for the full article